


Red

by kmsmitty



Category: Topp Dogg (Band)
Genre: Denial, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 05:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmsmitty/pseuds/kmsmitty
Summary: Hansol is trying to navigate his way through high school as a gay teenager. Byungjoo makes it difficult for him.





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> So the female characters in this are made up. This is another rework from a year ago. It's amazing how my fics can apply to different fandoms. Go me. Hope you enjoy.

I looked him dead in the face...and then I hocked it back and spat. Byungjoo flinched as my spit went *splat* across his eyes. The beautiful mix of spit and blood left a trail down the right side of his face. I flashed my teeth at him as he seethed with rage, his face going red with anger. Serves him right. That punch was a cheap shot.

We had always hated each other. Ever since we met in the sixth grade when I transferred to his school. We had every class together, and Byungjoo, being the annoying punk that he has always been, found it infinitely hilarious to make my life a living hell for being the new kid. Someone was going to do it; Byungjoo was just very up for the challenge.

It started small. I mean, what can you really do at 12 years old? He would trip me on my way to my seat, making my books fly across the room. Byungjoo would tip my tray in the cafeteria, and I would sit alone, hungry, staring at the clock, waiting for our 40 minute lunch break to be over.

It wasn't until we got into high school that things escalated. Byungjoo had long since stopped growing, but his ego and lust for making my life miserable had grown exponentially over the years. I had tried to take it in stride. My mother had told me that he just wanted a reaction, and that I shouldn't give it to him. I kept to my studies, and to my art, and tried to keep my head down. We only had one course together anymore, a writing class. He wrote lyrics. I wrote plot lines for comic books.

It had started when Minji had transferred in our freshman year. This gorgeous girl who was super empowered and didn't give two shits what anyone thought. She had sat next to me in my drawing class, and that was it. She was immediately my best friend. To be honest, she was my only friend.

That must have been what set Byungjoo off. That I finally had an ally. It only made matters worse that Minji had daggers for Byungjoo, while he seemed to be genuinely infatuated with her. She had made it abundantly clear that he had no chance with her, as she flipped him off from her perch in my lap. Her red stained lips parted into a smile as Byungjoo's mouth fell open.

I never understood why he was so upset. Obviously, she wasn't going to fawn over him. He had made my life hell for years. She wasn't magically going to forget that fact just because he smiled at her. Minji was nothing like the rest of the girls at our school.

But apparently, it was still my fault. He had come up to me one day, red in the face, asking about her. "What the fuck is your problem, man? Why you gotta poison me against Minji?" he had ground out as he pushed me into the lockers and held me there, his right arm across my chest.

"What are you talking about, Byungjoo? Everyone knows you love to torture me. She didn't have to be told. She's witnessed it. That's why she wants nothing to do with you," I responded, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. He was oddly strong for such a short shit.

Byungjoo sighed. "Well, are you fucking her? She's always touching you. You had better be fucking her," he spat into my face.

I simply stared at him. I was incapable of forming words. It was disgusting that he could belittle her down to just an object. Minji was everything light and beautiful and pure in the world. While it would have been an honor to be with her in that way, it just wasn't meant for us.

Mainly because both of us were huge homosexuals, but nobody needed to know that but us.

I apparently took too long to respond, gave Byungjoo too long to think about it. "Oh, my fucking God. You're. You're gay, aren't you?!"

Hmmm, what was your first clue? My fashion sense? My hair? My lack of interest in the female anatomy always sitting directly on my male anatomy? Or the gay ass story lines in all my comics? How he never flunked a grade is beyond me.

Byungjoo cackled in my face and let me go. He called from down the hallway, "I fucking knew it. Too prissy to pull down any pussy." I looked after him as he pushed through the set of double doors. What a cunt.

The next day began a new round of torture for me. It wasn't that people didn't assume I was gay. A good portion of people knew, in some sense, and nobody ever really got on my case about it.

Not until Kim Byungjoo decided to.

And he went for it. He got the combination to my locker and filled it with frilly, pink crepe paper. He fashioned streamers that said, "Congrats on your gayness" and hung them from my work space in the art room. Byungjoo also drew dicks, big ones, on anything he thought I would come into contact with during the day. So basically, a lot of fucking dicks.

It was weird to me that he wasn't physically coming after me for it. Byungjoo was the type of guy to swing first and worry about the consequences later. Little man syndrome. I would have thought that my being gay would have been a beatable offense. I guess he had some tact. Maybe. Doubtful.

The torment I could take. Minji's secret was still safe. Not that she couldn't have handled it. I don't really think anyone would have cared at all. But she hadn't told anyone at that school about it but me, and it was her information to share in her own time and in her own way. I would have been beyond mortified to have outed her. Especially to some punk like Kim fucking Byungjoo.

His pursuit of Minji picked up slightly after he knew I was no competition. Byungjoo began leaving flowers in her locker. He would buy her brownies at lunch. Try to get the answers to pop quizzes to her physics class. He almost seemed...decent...when it came to her, anyway.

But Minji didn't budge. Not because Byungjoo clearly wasn't her type, but because she was a loyal friend. She always made it a point to publicly ruin whatever Byungjoo did for her.

When Byungjoo brought her flowers, she would pick the petals off and write him a note that said, "I love you not." The brownies always got given to the kids on reduced lunch, since that was probably their only meal of the day anyway. And Minji never accepted the answer key. She didn't need to. She was going to college for astronomy. There was no way she was going to get nailed for cheating.

This went on in some form or another until our senior year. Until Homecoming. Minji finally decided to make it known that girls were more her speed. She took Yiri to the dance. I have never seen two people make out harder. Good for them.

Monday morning, Byungjoo came in in a rampage. I had just closed my locker and turned around when he body slammed me up against it. He put his face so close to mine that our noses touched. "Meet me in the tunnel by the train tracks after school. Don't make me hunt you down," he growled at me. He stalked off down the hallway towards his homeroom. I gulped.

Byungjoo avoided my gaze the rest of the day. No tripping me on the way to my seat. No making fun of my clothes. No writing songs about what a douchecanoe he thought I was.

It was quiet. Eerily quiet. Too quiet.

The final bell rang, and I didn't move. I saw him get up and look over his shoulder back at me. He lifted an eyebrow and pushed into the massive crowd making their way to their lockers so they could head home.

I wanted to head home.

But I knew he would find me.

I slowly left my chair and shuffled my way down the hall. I had finished up all my homework during final period, so I just needed to shove my books in my locker. Except I didn't. I gingerly placed each one in, then took some time to organize the other contents. I was prolonging the inevitable. It was one thing for Byungjoo to come after me on school grounds. He feared his father too much to get suspended, so he kept it pretty light.

But off school property? I doubted he would hold back. And he knew that I wouldn't say anything. That would just make all this worse.

I sighed as I closed my locker and began walking out to the soccer field. The train tracks were close, just a couple blocks away. I felt like I was walking to the gallows. Peel it off like a Band-Aid, Hansol. Get it over with.

I saw him standing in the center of the tunnel, directly under the dimming light. He was pacing back and forth. Even from about a block away, I could feel his anger. I just didn't know what I had done.

I stopped walking a few feet away from him. He looked up at me, his eyes black, his face red. And then he spoke, gravel in his voice. "Why the fuck didn't you say something about Minji? You let me carry on with her for years. You knew, and you just sat back and watched me make a fool of myself," he ground out.

I blinked a few times, trying to decide how I wanted to go about answering. I wanted my words to cut him, but I also didn't want to make things worse for myself. He was shaking with anger.

"It wasn't my place to tell you. Plus, even if she were into guys, you would have never stood a chance. Not with the way you have made me miserable for the past seven years. You may be able to convince other girls that you're worth their time, but Minji isn't like other girls. She would have had you figured out even if you had left me alone all this time."

Byungjoo tilted his head to the side. He opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to form words, and then deciding against it. He gave me a hard glare, and then sprinted forward.

He tackled me with enough force to take me completely off my feet and onto the ground. My head smacked the pavement as he landed on top of me, his hands reaching to pin my arms.

"I am not going to stand back and let you two make a fool of me," he yelled as he held both my wrists in his left hand. He began punching me with his right as I struggled to push him off me. I swung my legs up and wrapped them around his small frame and kicked and pulled. He let go when I managed to get a knee shot to his kidney.

We both stood up, panting heavily. Byungjoo lunged forward and pushed me up against the wall of the tunnel. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna hit you," he said. I relaxed slightly and then felt his fist connect with my face. What a cheap shot.

I felt my lip split open, could taste the blood in my mouth where my teeth had ripped into the inside of my cheek. Byungjoo stepped back, looking incredibly proud of himself. That was it.

I pulled what blood I could grab with my tongue into my mouth, snorted some snot down, and hocked it straight into Byungjoo's face.

It covered his eyes, and his hands flew to his face to try and wipe it away. I laughed as he tried to clean himself up. Byungjoo smeared the mess across the legs of his jeans. His face was so red, it was practically purple.

He moved forward to swing at me, but I caught his arm and twisted it behind his back. I moved him up against the wall, pinning him there.

"You really want to fuck with me like that, Byungjoo? I know just the angle to push your arm to snap it in half. Is that what you want?"

"Fuck. Let me go, Hansol. Please," he wheezed out. I knew it hurt. But he deserved it. I let go of his arm and wrapped my hand around his throat. "What is your fucking problem with me, Byungjoo?"

Byungjoo stared at me for a minute before bringing his hands up to latch onto the one I had clutching his neck. I let go, but he didn't.

"Do you really not know?" he whispered at me. My eyebrows furrowed, and I shook my head. "Do I really not know what, Byungjoo?"

He let out a deep sigh. He lunged forward, making me flinch back, but his hands grabbed the sides of my face and pulled me into him. Byungjoo crashed his lips into mine, biting my busted lip and smearing red across both our faces.

I wrenched myself out of his grip, leaned back, and swung with all my might. My hand connected with his nose, and blood began pouring from it. "What in the literal fuck do you think you're doing?!"

Byungjoo moved forward and grabbed a fistful of my hair. He pulled my head back, and I dropped to my knees. Fuck. It hurt.

"I have had a crush on you since the day Mrs. Cha introduced you in Geography. I remember it vividly. Your hair was brown. You had on a Bowie t shirt. Your jeans were ripped at the knees. Your red Converse were covered in mud. You looked terrified, but you smiled as wide as your face could manage. And I didn't know what to do with the feelings that bubbled up in my chest and stomach. So I went after you in the only way I knew how. I tortured you. I didn't know what I felt for you at the time. I just knew that my dad would think it was wrong."

Byungjoo let go of my hair and leaned flush against the wall. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing even. I slowly stood up. I don't know why I did what I did next, but it felt necessary. It felt right.

I pulled that tiny human into a hug. I should have just walked away, but he looked so fucking broken. He began to sob into my shoulder. I ran my fingers through his hair. My heart ached.

"I'm so sorry, Hansol. I thought if I could get close to Minji, I could be close to you by association. She's lovely, but she isn't who I want. I'm scared, Hansol. I'm so scared," he choked out between sobs.

"Wait. Is that why you quit messing with me when you figured out I'm gay?" Byungjoo nodded, "I was mean to you all those years because I didn't think that there was any possible way that you could like me back. Especially with the way you and Minji interact. You're always touching, always close, always smiling. But when I found out that you didn't see her that way, I dunno. I just hoped things could work out," he sniffed, wiping his nose on his shirt sleeve.

I exhaled. Hard. What the fuck just happened? What? I'm supposed to forgive this little shit? Seven years, man. Seven years.

"Byungjoo? Are you okay?" I asked as I moved forward. He nodded, avoiding eye contact with me. "Pretty stupid, huh? God. I really fucked this up, didn't I?" he sighed, finally meeting my gaze.

I shrugged and reached a hand out to wipe the tears from his cheeks. He leaned into the touch. It felt like he was holding my heart in his fist.

Byungjoo flinched back as I moved forward, but I shook my head. "You don't need to be scared, Joo," I whispered as I kissed his eyes. They really were beautiful. Brown wasn't quite the right word to describe them. I had never seen anyone with eyes like his. I told him so.

"I have my father's eyes," he responded, his cheeks flushing. "God, he is going to be so angry. How am I supposed to go home now?"

I didn't answer, just pulled him closer. He nuzzled in the crook of my neck and breathed deep. It gave me goosebumps.

Byungjoo began kissing along my neck, up to my jaw. I grabbed his face and pulled his lips to mine, kissing him slowly, trying not to break open my lip again.

I felt him relax against me, his arms wrapping around my waist. I pushed my knee between his legs, pressing him up against the wall. I heard him gasp, and I continued forward, moving down his jawline to kiss his neck and collarbone.

"Hansol. I can't," he pleaded. I pulled away from him. "Give it time, Byungjoo. You'll get there."

I backed away and let him collect himself. That's when I saw it. I couldn't help but laugh. Byungjoo looked up at me, his brows knitted together, a confused look on his face.

I pointed to his belt. "Really, Byungjoo? Studded AND pink. Could you be more queer?"


End file.
